


Once I Had

by missema



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Backstory, Established Relationship, F/M, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Memories, Strangers to Lovers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-04
Updated: 2018-11-04
Packaged: 2019-08-18 19:32:13
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16523282
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missema/pseuds/missema
Summary: Who was Jean-Marc Stroud? He was a Grey Warden, yes, and the second son of a family that fell to the Grand Game. But there was more to him as a man, a side that only one women saw regularly. Once he had a lover, and at Varric's urging during Inquisition, he recalls their relationship.





	Once I Had

War takes many more forms than is realized by most. It is endless, constant, and devastating. To live through a war is to know it intimately, because it makes refugees of all in the end.

Jean-Marc was a veteran of many wars. Before he had ever engaged a real enemy, he was Ser Stroud, a young chevalier with much promise, and the son of a minor lord. He knew nothing of life and the countless endless wars that wage on without names or epic battles, but with victors and spoils all the same. The Game was such a war, endless and consuming, and he'd hated it before he lost his family to it.

It made him think he knew real carnage when he didn't. Being a Grey Warden brought him to horrors he hadn't known existed, and never could forget. He had nightmares long before any Calling started eating away at his mind. For all that he was forged of tempered steel in the heat of battle, Stroud valued beauty. He was Orlesian, after all, and had once been raised to expect beauty in all things. His mother had been a wonderful singer, with a high, clear soprano voice that still rang true, even in his dim memories. She loved music, taught it to him and passed that love, if only a scant amount of her talent, down to him.

The song playing in the dusty stone tavern drew him in, though he hadn't realized that it had been the music until he was standing inside, listening. All of his charges clustered around him, waiting to see if he would take a table. There weren't many wardens with him - they tended to travel in small groups unless needed in force - and they were still training their newest recruit. Even though they had survived their Joining and fully embraced the life of the Warden, Stroud still wanted to keep them from their former home for as long as possible. He knew how hard it was the break the bonds to a past life.

They were outside of Kaiten, in a tavern that had a musician playing over the quiet murmur of a few conversations. There was no crowd to speak of, just a few people huddled in corners. The people that were there, travelers, merchants and farmers mostly, seemed to enjoy the musician more than the ale. She was a dark woman, with long black hair that hung past thin shoulders, clad in an overlong tunic and dusty leggings, sitting in a chair with a lute next to her. There was no accompaniment for her song, just the power of her rich voice as it wound around the lyrics. The song she sang wasn't familiar, but had a certain lilt to it, a style that Stroud recognized vaguely.

The group sat, and Stroud announced in a low voice that they would stay for the night. He gave money to procure rooms to one of the junior wardens, and then turned back to the singing woman as she was ending her song. When she finished, there was a smattering of applause, and she looked up at him. She smiled, a question contained within her small gesture, but then picked up the lute next to her and began to play anew. No singing this time, just the sound of the lute as she coaxed a sweet, melancholy tune from it. She glanced up at him during the song, as if he would disappear while she was distracted, but Stroud had not taken his eyes from her.

Her smile startled him, but he returned it all the same, though he wondered if she could see it under his moustache in the dark tavern. It didn’t matter. He wouldn’t turn from her gaze even for a refill of his ale. The feeling that shot between them, the heat that made his toes curl inside of his boots with anticipation nearly bowled Jean-Marc over, so long it had been since he’d last felt it. The trobairitz continued playing her song, her soft smile still gracing her face even as she broke their stare and looked down at her lute. She was by far the most beautiful person he’d ever come across in a life so scarred by war.

He was a horror himself most days, but for her he might let himself be something better, almost like the man he once was meant to be.

Stroud waited for her. After her music stopped, she went behind the counter and gave orders to the bartender. He watched her as she swept out a store room and made the menu for the next day. He stayed far longer than he should have, waiting when he should have been sleeping.

He could do without much sleep. Even at his age, he was still a Grey Warden.

“Do you need another drink?” she asked, and he caught the hint of Minrathous in her voice. Tevinter then, but she’d come a long way from the Imperium.

“Is this your bar?” he asked in return. She smiled at him, warmer now that they were talking and she wasn’t on display.

She pushed back wavy, black hair from her face and sat down next to him. “I know where things go. I could even show you to your room, if you’re lost.”

“Have a drink with me first,” Stroud answered, “I so rarely get to drink with beautiful women these days.”

“Watch yourself, Warden. I could get used to a silver tongue,” she replied.

“Could you? Maybe you would be more amenable to my words if I knew what to call you.”

“Call me Karis,” she said.

“Karis in Kaiten. I’m Stroud.”

“I didn’t ask your family name,” she replied, just as a glass of cool white wine was set in front of her. He raised an eyebrow at her, not just at the response, but her choice of drink.

“Jean-Marc,” he said, relenting to her silence.

“Good to know. I’ll have something to scream tonight when I take you to my bed,” Karis said.

He laughed, but knew she was right; he was a sure thing. This night with her singing in her bar, he might have ignored the archdemon if it came through the doors while she was smiling at him. Karis put her nose into the glass of wine before taking a sip, and Stroud realized how much he liked that too, proper appreciation of her drink before consuming it.

Ten minutes later he was kissing Karis with a hand down her leggings in her private room. Stroud was wondering what lovely shade of brown the nipples hardening under his palm would be when he finally got her completely undressed. Sex with such a beautiful partner was an unexpected highlight after listening to her song.

#

Karis never waited for him, and Stroud was glad of that. She had a child in the intervening years between some of his visits, and though he couldn’t have fathered it, he liked the thought that she was a mother. Her body grew softer and rounder than it had been that first night they spent together, but never less beautiful. It was Karis; Stroud always desired her. It was her he thought of whenever he faced the unknown and the constant war, though he and Karis had never bothered to fall in love.

He just was fond of her, and later of her daughter, and of the son she bore after that. They called him simply Warden, wove flowers into necklaces for him to wear, gave him gifts.

“Do they have the same father?” he asked once, and Karis blushed.

“Yes, but I am not married. You needn’t worry about an angry husband.”

“I don’t,” Stroud said easily, and changed the subject. “Will you play for me again before I leave?”

Karis gave him a gentle smile, a rarer sight these days than it once had been, but all the more special for it. “Of course, Jean-Marc. I always play whenever the Wardens come calling.”

A decade passed, and he’d seen Karis perhaps fourteen times during the span of it. Enough that he made it a point to see her when he was nearby, but each visit was irregularly spaced out and unplanned. His last visit was after Kirkwall was engulfed in flames. He couldn’t go back there, not after last time. Stroud had seen enough of Kirkwall when the Qunari tried to take it.

When he came through the door of the bar, his favorite song started up just after the last one ended, and he knew Karis would welcome him to her bed tonight. It was almost like coming home, if he had ever been allowed one.

#

He thought of Karis when he was at Skyhold. The Calling had started, and no matter whether it was false or not, he thought about dying every day. It was inevitable, all people die, but he would have liked to have seen Karis and her children once more. Jean-Marc was simply growing maudlin in his old age, or at least that’s what he told himself. Not many people came to talk to him, so when Varric began prying, Stroud indulged him.

"Once, I had a lover, that I returned to for a few years," Stroud admitted, standing on the battlements of Skyhold. He didn't know how else to explain Karis, what she'd meant to him. Lover seemed an inadequate description for what they'd shared.

He smiled off into the distance, thinking of the music that always came to mind when he thought of her. Varric was the only person to visit him for conversation with any regularity, though Commander Cullen often came by to speak with him or ask him if he'd like to spar.

"But not any more?" Varric asked.

"It's been a long way since I've been able to see her. Hopefully she has moved on."

"She's in the Free Marches?"

Stroud gave the dwarf a look, but Varric didn't quail under it. If anything, he looked even more bored. "Yes, she owns a tavern near Kaiten. Why do you ask?"

Varric looked away from him, squinting into the sunlight. "It's a good time to catch your breath. The Wardens aren't going to hunt for you here. Maybe you should sit down and write her a letter before we head out to Adamant. She's probably been thinking about you, with all that's going on." Varric shrugged and then added, "you might even hear back, if you send it soon."

Stroud thought about it and nodded, then moved on to more banal topics with Varric. What would he say to her? Reassure her that he was alive and well, at least for the moment? He didn't know if she was even well herself, though he hadn't heard much news of rifts near Kaiten. Perhaps just a few words would serve. Karis should take care. Her daughter would be old enough now that she might venture out alone and fall prey to demons falling from the sky. The thought chilled him. He should send the warnings while he could.

He sent the letter, then went to Adamant with the Inquisition. When he didn't come back, Varric picked up his pen and sent one last letter to the address he'd paid a messenger to copy from Stroud's envelope. Whatever she had been to Stroud, she deserved to know.


End file.
